Your Beauty Dream Team: Nighttime Facial Masks

The latest trend in skin care gives your complexion a major boost while you sleep

If you're anything like me, you love your eight hours a night (okay, seven … on a good day), but you wish you could function with less. All that time spent horizontal just seems so, well, unproductive. If sleep came in capsule form, I'd take it.

In the same vein, I have limited patience for skin care masks. While I love the idea of doing a DIY facial once or twice a week, slapping on a treatment and putting my feet up for half an hour is never going to happen. I blame it on my schedule, but it might just be beauty ADD.

This, my friends, is where sleeping masks come in. They're a multi-tasker's dream come true. I first covered this emerging skin care trend earlier this year, and it's continued to grow ever since. What started as a handful of products is now a full-blown category with newer and more advanced versions hitting department stores every few weeks.

Here's how they work: in lieu of your regular nighttime skin care routine, you apply a sleeping mask, and you go to bed. That's it. You're done. You don't rinse it off -- don't worry, it won't transfer to your pillow -- and in the morning, your skin is firm and glowy.